Chapter 14 - The Sixth Floor
I dropped the pen.
Richard said, "Sit down."
I ran.
Not fast. Not gracefully. But fast enough.
Behind me he shouted, and somewhere a man came through a side door.
I hit the stairwell.
One flight.
Two.
My lungs burned.
The knocks came again above me.
Three. Pause. Three.
By the fourth floor my abdomen cramped hard enough to stop me.
I grabbed the railing.
"Not now," I whispered to my daughter. "Please, not now."
Footsteps thundered below.
Then another sound.
A crash.
Daniel's voice shouted from the lobby.
The police had moved early.
I kept climbing.
On the sixth floor, the hallway was dark except for construction lights.
"Noah?"
A muffled cry came from an office.
The door was locked.
I picked up a fire extinguisher and slammed it against the knob.
Once.
Twice.
A hand grabbed my shoulder.
I swung the extinguisher backward.
The man behind me stumbled with a curse.
I ran into him with my full weight and screamed.
Police rushed around the corner seconds later.
They took him down.
An officer forced the office door.
Noah was tied to a chair, crying but unhurt.
Evelyn pushed past everyone and dropped to her knees around him.
Daniel stopped in the doorway.
His son looked up.
For a second, father and child simply stared at each other.
Then my body tightened from my back to my stomach.
A stronger contraction.
Daniel caught me before I hit the wall.
"Claire?"
"I'm okay."
I was not.
Downstairs, officers had Richard in custody.
But when Alvarez searched the folding table, the waiver was gone.
So was Richard's phone.
One of his men had escaped through a service tunnel.
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And on the wall beside the table, written in fresh black marker, was a message:
THE CHILD IS STILL THE KEY.
